The Curious Case Of The African Pothole

South Africa’s famous bearded explorer and philanthropist Kingsley Holgate writes about some of the stories behind the stories on his many adventures across the African continent. This month he focuses on the indigenous African Pothole...

It’s been a helluva day – 14 hours to do just 158km on one of the worst potholed roads yet, lurching and swaying along, sometimes at slower than walking pace. Old broken tar, made worse by lorries carrying food aid up to the border. So it isn’t surprising that tonight around the campfire, we get to recount the story of the African Pothole.

The French have the Eiffel Tower and champagne; the Dutch, their tulips and cheese; the Irish, their Guinness; the Cubans, their cigars; and the British, their tea. We in Africa have the Pothole and no adventure is complete without the persistent hiss of escaping air from a cut tyre, or worse still... a burst tyre with accompanying rifle shot-like explosion that, if it happens in a war-torn area, has the passengers all ducking for cover. Here in Africa, potholes are part of life.

You can be purring along in top gear, not a roadblock in sight, when without warning, hidden in the shade and too late for the shout of “Watch out! Potholes!” from a wide-eyed passenger, you suddenly run into an entire pothole family.

You swing hard to the left, then dangerously right, nearly rolling the Landy to avoid the baby potholes before a mother of a pothole with a hard edge catches your left back tyre with a sickening, bone-jarring thud.

The camp kettle, flying forward like a missile, comes at you as you stand on the brakes, locking the wheels to avoid writing off your suspension as you slide into Big Daddy who has stretched himself right across the road, cleverly hidden by his late afternoon-shade tree.